Saturday, July 4, 2009

Brickwall? Not until you've tried the New York Public Library

Regularly I hear the complaint that someone has hit a brickwall in finding an ancestor. Usually, when I question them about where they have searched, we find that there are a lot of places they never thought to look. One of those places is the New York Public Library.

The New York Public Library ranks right up there with the British Library, the Library of Congress and the BibliothèqueNationalede France. In addition, the NYPL has one of the largest genealogical collections in the World. It is literally amazing the variety of documents, books and manuscripts in its eighteen locations. Its list of online services is really impressive and includes 74 searchable full-text databases of such sources as theAncestry Library Edition, HeritageQuest Online, ProQuest Historical Newspapers: New York Times (1851-2003), Chicago Defender (1905-1975), Chicago Tribune (1849-1985), Los Angeles Times (1881-1985), Washington Post (1877-1990), and the New York Tribune (1900-1910), Early American Newspapers, 1690-1876, Times of London, 1785-1985, 19th Century Masterfile, New England Ancestors, New York County Histories Online, and Burke’s Peerage and Gentry Online, Origins Network (British and Irish Genealogy).

Although the Family History Library in Salt Lake has a huge genealogical collection, it is not all inclusive. Library resources at the NYPL include:

If you can't scrape up the money to go to New York (and visit the library instead of all the other things to see and do) then try the NYPL online resources. By the way, the NYPL has the largest map collection in the world. By the way, the NYPL has one of two largest sound recording collections in the U.S. By the way, the Music Division of the NYPL has some of the largest collections of various composers in the world. By the way, the NYPL Digital Gallery provides free and open access to over 685,000 images digitized from the library's vast collections including manuscripts, maps, posters, prints, photographs and much more.